The term “Web 2.0” is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web (WWW, also referred to hereinafter as the Internet or a network, further includes intranet, extranet, and the like). Web 2.0 thus necessarily includes aspects of connecting non-virtual identity to virtual identity on the WWW using a data feed comprised of data relationships and business and data intelligence. As used hereinthroughout, and unless otherwise noted, the term “identity” is defined to include non-virtual and/or virtual aspects of a person interacting on, with, or with others on, the WWW.
In an example of a typical social network, Facebook® connects an identity with other persons based on, for example, friendship. Further, persons using a social network platform such as the Facebook platform may generate activities, events, and the like, as indicated from the respective Facebook account associated with each respective identity. Once generated, the Facebook platform may automatically feed friends' activities, events, and the like to third person friends of the identity, such as when such activities or events are occurring or have occurred.
However, Facebook connects persons to persons, or persons/entities (such as businesses) to person/entities. Facebook does not provide any interconnection for domains associated with those persons or entities. Thus, in typical social environments such as Facebook, persons/entities generate and receive the data. That is, the Facebook platform feeds data to and from the friends identified as being associated with each identity. Needless to say, data generated in this way, and absent data monitoring regarding domain names associated with the persons/entities on Facebook, severely limits the usefulness of the data generated by such typical social sites—particularly for advertising purposes, for example.
Further, there are over 200 million domains as of 2010, and over 1.8 billion web users. These users are running approximately 15 billion web searches a year, which leads each user to 2-3 unknown websites per day, on average. Such websites, if unknown to the user and without any way for the user to have a trusted party (such as a social network friend, or a trusted domain) that indicates the acceptability of the unknown site, may pose a risk to users, such as an increased likelihood of phishing or providing malware.
Thus, there is a need for a “domain social network” that interconnects data regarding identities (i.e., persons/entities) to data regarding domains. More particularly, there is a need for an engine, system and method to generate domain data using, and that itself provides business intelligence logic, wherein data is related, such as for sales, advertising or trustworthiness, purposes, to an identity's activity.